Last week I actually had enough time to write an article (and what an article it was!) so I figured I would save my shorter, more personal memorandum for this week due to me traveling back to Thisisafakecountry today. With any luck, I will make it to my home with as little swine flu as possible. With that explained, lets get started.
My name is Thisisafakename. My mother, Thisisafakemother, named me after my great grandfather; Thisisafakedeadguy. Ehh, I killed it already. Anyway, I appear to be the frequent flyer mile title holder for the group. I live and work anywhere and everywhere most of the time. So despite what some may say, I actually have a rather open mind and general knowledge of "how it is" not just here but around the world. In my travels I have seen things that have made me proud of my American heritage and I have seen things that make me feel rather embarassed about our society in the Nifty Fifty. A sample of this: By far, American's care more about what others think than any other society in the world. We tend have a ridiculous amount of compassion not only for our society but for others as well. The counter example of this would be the tendency that we absolutely can not fathom that others think differently and act/do differently than us. This however is not just a conflict from people from abroad, but it is within our own borders as well. You can go back to last week to see an example of how this can effect our social interacting. Point, no counter point, just anger. We need to lighten up a little bit. Do some listening instead of talking. I don't want to make people quit the internet on my behalf, but I also don't want people to be flat out weak.
O.K., more about me. I am done with school as of now, which may also put me in a slightly different demographic than most of the posters here, which I think is a good thing. Some may be shocked to find out that I actually went to and graduated from college, and to be honest, that makes me laugh. Those same people may be even more shocked to find out that I wrote for a daily publication at my school as well. I am excited to join this blog because I really do have a lot to say (I have been listening for quite some time) and I am excited to have an audience of people who can actually speak my language. My writings will be a bit schizophrenic at times due to me having a couple different writing styles. I will warn others in advance; I can have a dry sense of humor and rarely write anything serious. My metaphores can be dangerous, so look out. If I write a parody, I have no trouble using sick children or single mothers instead of zombies and dinosaurs. If it is dangerously close to touching home on an actual topic, it might just make you think. Even if you think I am wrong, I still am happy because I made you think. You have a counter point, I would love to hear it. I'm not the devil, though I am pretty sure King Solomon is. With that said, I have a plane to catch.
Regards,
Thisisafakename
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Regarding ADHD, intelligence, and our very first Blogodrama:
Hi team.
I realize post last week was mostly tongue-in-cheek, and it's a shame it all resulted in an after-school special. However, I'm going to take the liberty of responding to the post at face-value because I feel it NEEDS a respectful rebuttal.
I'll begin with an attempt to paraphrase the key point:
'There's no such thing as adhd. The only problem is that people are bitches of various types and no longer discipline their kids.'
Personally, I agree with the following: a lot of kids aren't given enough structure these days, the adhd label is over-applied, and that some parents/ individuals use the label as a crutch and as an reason to abrogate personal responsibility.
That being said, a certain percentage of kids really DO have significant, diagnosable neurological issues relating to attention and executive function, regardless of the actual underlying 'cause'. Some percentage of kids have probably always had these issues. I think the major difference between now and 'the good old days' is that they used to stay more in line because otherwise people would hit them with things like rulers and belts. I feel like in some ways, all we've done is replace the direct threat of violence with dope. I'm not really sure which is preferable.
If the incidence of adhd *is* on the rise (with crap like this, it's really hard to tell), poor parenting could be a contributing factor. But so could things like environmental changes, diet, fad diagnosis, the opportunistic behavior of big Pharma, and the grooming of shorter and shorter attention spans via electronic media.
Another possibility is that the level of attention *expected* from children has risen over the years (longer school hours, complexity and amount of material, etc), to the point where more and more kids are falling behind the cut. Maybe you put something like that together with more lenient parenting styles, and you could have a big problem.
With issues like this, it is very difficult to pick everything apart, and focusing on a single aspect and making inflammatory blanket statements about it really misses the point. I think that jumping straight to a simple explanation for a complex issue and sticking to it usually obscures more than it explains (e.g., virtually all political campaigning).
...
Right now I work 2 days a week in an elementary school with children who have cognitive and language-based deficits. As a clinician who actually works children who have issues like these, and has met and heard about a number of their parents, I would like to make the following point about explicitly labeling deficits:
Diagnostic labels are both good and bad for the same reason; giving a complex combination of fuzzy internal factors a single name make them feel easier to understand and externalize. As in, "It's not just 'me', it's my x."
On the bad side of things, people can use 'X' as way to excuse all personal failings, a reason not to change or improve their situation, and also as a reason for everyone else to give them special allowances or treatment:
"I may not be lifting a finger to help him myself, but my child has X, so it's the responsibility of the school system to pay 50 grand a year to send them to this special school."
On the good side, explicitly labeling something that's otherwise just 'them' can help put things in perspective, help the person stop beating themselves up, and be the basis for figuring out ways to compensate for whatever the deficit is and grow. Without that level of separation given by *accurate* diagnoses and labels, its difficult to get that process going.
The following is in response to Guy's comments about intelligence:
When you said that a lot of kids who are 'just stupid' now claim they have ADHD, something like the inverse used to be true. Before people started talking specifically about attention and executive function problems, anyone who had those issues WAS 'just stupid', or 'just lazy'. That was the only way they had to describe it. Your comments seem to imply that that you think of intelligence as a single capacity, that in general you either have it or you don't. There's a Lot of research that shows it's more complicated that that. Remind me to write about the Theory of Multiple intelligences in a future post.
Sure, some of those 'just stupid' kids you mention are below average on a whole list of cognitive capacities, and they're going to have problems throughout life no matter what you call them. But if all you have is a 'Stupid' category, a bunch of the kids you have to lump in there are actually good at a lot of things, or even really really good at 1 or 2 things. They're just *not* good at the 2 or 3 things everyone usually quantifies to set an arbitrary standard for intelligence. If you tell that set of talented kids that don't fit the standard that they're stupid, unfortunately most of them are going to believe you. And I truly believe that when that happens, society (yes, society) loses out on a lot of what they would have offered.
...
This blog is a joint venture. We all get to decide what and how we choose write. That being said, I feel like a basic level of respect in what we write and how we respond to one another is essential. The interpretation of 'basic respect' is definitely up for grabs (and should leave plenty of room for cheek), but for me a commitment to it isn't. I don't think there's any other way to have intelligent debate, and unintelligent debates are really, really boring.
I'm not trying to call anyone out in particular, but given our very own first baby blogodrama last week, I need this point made explicitly for my own peace of mind.
...
In this light, I would like to apologize to Bunny for the inflammatory comments I made last Wednesday against Mati.
I didn't realize you still had his poster tacked up over your bed. You still have Heart, big guy. Never let me take that away from you.
I realize post last week was mostly tongue-in-cheek, and it's a shame it all resulted in an after-school special. However, I'm going to take the liberty of responding to the post at face-value because I feel it NEEDS a respectful rebuttal.
I'll begin with an attempt to paraphrase the key point:
'There's no such thing as adhd. The only problem is that people are bitches of various types and no longer discipline their kids.'
Personally, I agree with the following: a lot of kids aren't given enough structure these days, the adhd label is over-applied, and that some parents/ individuals use the label as a crutch and as an reason to abrogate personal responsibility.
That being said, a certain percentage of kids really DO have significant, diagnosable neurological issues relating to attention and executive function, regardless of the actual underlying 'cause'. Some percentage of kids have probably always had these issues. I think the major difference between now and 'the good old days' is that they used to stay more in line because otherwise people would hit them with things like rulers and belts. I feel like in some ways, all we've done is replace the direct threat of violence with dope. I'm not really sure which is preferable.
If the incidence of adhd *is* on the rise (with crap like this, it's really hard to tell), poor parenting could be a contributing factor. But so could things like environmental changes, diet, fad diagnosis, the opportunistic behavior of big Pharma, and the grooming of shorter and shorter attention spans via electronic media.
Another possibility is that the level of attention *expected* from children has risen over the years (longer school hours, complexity and amount of material, etc), to the point where more and more kids are falling behind the cut. Maybe you put something like that together with more lenient parenting styles, and you could have a big problem.
With issues like this, it is very difficult to pick everything apart, and focusing on a single aspect and making inflammatory blanket statements about it really misses the point. I think that jumping straight to a simple explanation for a complex issue and sticking to it usually obscures more than it explains (e.g., virtually all political campaigning).
...
Right now I work 2 days a week in an elementary school with children who have cognitive and language-based deficits. As a clinician who actually works children who have issues like these, and has met and heard about a number of their parents, I would like to make the following point about explicitly labeling deficits:
Diagnostic labels are both good and bad for the same reason; giving a complex combination of fuzzy internal factors a single name make them feel easier to understand and externalize. As in, "It's not just 'me', it's my x."
On the bad side of things, people can use 'X' as way to excuse all personal failings, a reason not to change or improve their situation, and also as a reason for everyone else to give them special allowances or treatment:
"I may not be lifting a finger to help him myself, but my child has X, so it's the responsibility of the school system to pay 50 grand a year to send them to this special school."
On the good side, explicitly labeling something that's otherwise just 'them' can help put things in perspective, help the person stop beating themselves up, and be the basis for figuring out ways to compensate for whatever the deficit is and grow. Without that level of separation given by *accurate* diagnoses and labels, its difficult to get that process going.
The following is in response to Guy's comments about intelligence:
When you said that a lot of kids who are 'just stupid' now claim they have ADHD, something like the inverse used to be true. Before people started talking specifically about attention and executive function problems, anyone who had those issues WAS 'just stupid', or 'just lazy'. That was the only way they had to describe it. Your comments seem to imply that that you think of intelligence as a single capacity, that in general you either have it or you don't. There's a Lot of research that shows it's more complicated that that. Remind me to write about the Theory of Multiple intelligences in a future post.
Sure, some of those 'just stupid' kids you mention are below average on a whole list of cognitive capacities, and they're going to have problems throughout life no matter what you call them. But if all you have is a 'Stupid' category, a bunch of the kids you have to lump in there are actually good at a lot of things, or even really really good at 1 or 2 things. They're just *not* good at the 2 or 3 things everyone usually quantifies to set an arbitrary standard for intelligence. If you tell that set of talented kids that don't fit the standard that they're stupid, unfortunately most of them are going to believe you. And I truly believe that when that happens, society (yes, society) loses out on a lot of what they would have offered.
...
This blog is a joint venture. We all get to decide what and how we choose write. That being said, I feel like a basic level of respect in what we write and how we respond to one another is essential. The interpretation of 'basic respect' is definitely up for grabs (and should leave plenty of room for cheek), but for me a commitment to it isn't. I don't think there's any other way to have intelligent debate, and unintelligent debates are really, really boring.
I'm not trying to call anyone out in particular, but given our very own first baby blogodrama last week, I need this point made explicitly for my own peace of mind.
...
In this light, I would like to apologize to Bunny for the inflammatory comments I made last Wednesday against Mati.
I didn't realize you still had his poster tacked up over your bed. You still have Heart, big guy. Never let me take that away from you.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
But wait, there's more!
Congratulations, you’re going to a nursing home!
What do antibiotics, multivitamins, fluoride, pasteurization, and the discovery of fire all have in common? They all contribute to making sure your brain dies before your body does. Ah, the joys of senility. Do you wish you never had that good-for-nothing son? You’ll believe you never did! Felt like you wasted all that time and money studying things in college that no one cares about or spent your life in a thankless job and have nothing to show for it? Good news, you’ll forget all of that. All of the cells in your body continue to die off and come back anew… but they also have time limits, a certain number of cycles before they just quit renovating. It used to be that we didn’t live long enough for our brain’s term limit to affect most of us. In the good ol’ days, we used to waste away in enfeebled shells, while our capable minds watch helplessly from our functional but ineffectual cranial prisons. But those days are gone! Now our bodies can be kept alive and kicking well beyond the expiration date stamped on our grey-matter cartons.
What could be better than retiring at 62 and living to be 104? Forty plus years of doing nothing but watching your mental acuity slip daily by almost imperceptibly small degrees. You’ll get to enjoy great new hobbies like:
- Calling your cats (and/or grandchildren) by the your children‘s names.
- Meticulously cleaning your house in anticipation for the president’s visit.
- Answering the door naked at 2:00am, after no one even knocked on the door, to accept your delivery of hundreds of beautiful cakes and pies.
- And so much more!
All of this can be yours. Just make sure you take your 11 prescriptions every day, exercise five days a week, take your vitamins, avoid red meat, don’t drink alcohol, get your flu shot, avoid physical contact with questionable minorities, limit television to 15 minutes per day, walk at least five miles daily, practice yoga, pilates, and tai chi, and regularly visit your primary care doctor, your cardiologist, your ear, nose, and throat specialist, your vascular consultant, your dentist, and your chiropractor, and by all means, don‘t forget your omega-3 fatty acids and your St. John‘s wert. Taking these simple steps can ensure that you too can live well past the time your mind and body were ever intended for!
What do antibiotics, multivitamins, fluoride, pasteurization, and the discovery of fire all have in common? They all contribute to making sure your brain dies before your body does. Ah, the joys of senility. Do you wish you never had that good-for-nothing son? You’ll believe you never did! Felt like you wasted all that time and money studying things in college that no one cares about or spent your life in a thankless job and have nothing to show for it? Good news, you’ll forget all of that. All of the cells in your body continue to die off and come back anew… but they also have time limits, a certain number of cycles before they just quit renovating. It used to be that we didn’t live long enough for our brain’s term limit to affect most of us. In the good ol’ days, we used to waste away in enfeebled shells, while our capable minds watch helplessly from our functional but ineffectual cranial prisons. But those days are gone! Now our bodies can be kept alive and kicking well beyond the expiration date stamped on our grey-matter cartons.
What could be better than retiring at 62 and living to be 104? Forty plus years of doing nothing but watching your mental acuity slip daily by almost imperceptibly small degrees. You’ll get to enjoy great new hobbies like:
- Calling your cats (and/or grandchildren) by the your children‘s names.
- Meticulously cleaning your house in anticipation for the president’s visit.
- Answering the door naked at 2:00am, after no one even knocked on the door, to accept your delivery of hundreds of beautiful cakes and pies.
- And so much more!
All of this can be yours. Just make sure you take your 11 prescriptions every day, exercise five days a week, take your vitamins, avoid red meat, don’t drink alcohol, get your flu shot, avoid physical contact with questionable minorities, limit television to 15 minutes per day, walk at least five miles daily, practice yoga, pilates, and tai chi, and regularly visit your primary care doctor, your cardiologist, your ear, nose, and throat specialist, your vascular consultant, your dentist, and your chiropractor, and by all means, don‘t forget your omega-3 fatty acids and your St. John‘s wert. Taking these simple steps can ensure that you too can live well past the time your mind and body were ever intended for!
Several can keep that 3.
I've had kind of a hectic mental week, and failed in my task of preparing juicy, mind-nourishing bloggy goodness. But don't despair, I've brought you the next best thing, bits and pieces of all the things I didn't want to write about.
If we were each the size of a universe, telescopes might not be as big of a deal. Likewise, if we were the size of sub-atomic particles, micro-scopes wouldn't be of much use (as far as I know). But as things stand, most humans are smaller than a universe and bigger than a quark, so telescopes and microscopes make sense to us.
People had a fit some while back over a rumor that Obama was going to end the program that allows commercial pilots to carry firearms while flying. The rumor turned out to be as false as their arguments. There has been one shot discharged under the program since it's inception eight years ago - an accident resulting from a pilot playing with his gun. Though se3veral hundred of the guns have been misplaced by pilots over the years. A hole the size of a bullet can tear a plane apart at 450mph, and given that cops and military personnel who get much, much more training than this program provides still miss 80% of the time (when not on a moving plane), that's not a very wise recipe. I think people just like to complain.
A surprising number of people I've talked to recently don't care whether their existence is an objective or subjective one. I can't really wrap my mind around how that's not important to them. =/
If you flat-out ask people what they are concerned about in life, they'll give sound byte answers like "the economy," "Iraq," or something similarly trite. However, they can't be that worried, because even the most basic of followup questions, like "do you think the new stimulus bill will help?" asked in response to an answer of "the economy" will yield a confused facial expression and maybe a shoulder shrug. Apparently, worry and concern aren't so bad as to bother reading something or taking the time to form an opinion on your concerns.
What in the world can make a brown-eyed girl turn blue?
Culture put an end to human evolution some 5-10,000 years ago. Since then we've failed to develop any useful new traits... with armageddon right around the corner, I hope it was worth it. I just hope people aren't surprised when bears with no opposable thumbs and wolves who can't speak, much less write a good novel have us hiding in old burned-out warehouses and remnants of subway systems, eating rats and forgetting everything we gave up on evolution to learn.
Even after seven years, Morrowind is still a great PC game. I'm about to complain about something, but it doesn't deserve it's own paragraph, so it goes unrelatedly here. Cheddar is a horrible cheese. It fails in almost every category of desirability there is for a cheese, and yet Americans love it. Usually, I don't care for elitists, but this time I can see where they're coming from - eating extra sharp cheddar is like putting a dirty sock that was left outside during most of a humid autumnn season in your mouth, but harder and less enjoyable.
That's it. Yep. You waited all week for that. You = Fail. Oh well, maybe next time.
Edit: I don't read before I hit publish, and going back after the fact seems like cheating. But I will add that this post seemed uncharacteristically bitter for some reason - but again, it's been a tricky week.
If we were each the size of a universe, telescopes might not be as big of a deal. Likewise, if we were the size of sub-atomic particles, micro-scopes wouldn't be of much use (as far as I know). But as things stand, most humans are smaller than a universe and bigger than a quark, so telescopes and microscopes make sense to us.
People had a fit some while back over a rumor that Obama was going to end the program that allows commercial pilots to carry firearms while flying. The rumor turned out to be as false as their arguments. There has been one shot discharged under the program since it's inception eight years ago - an accident resulting from a pilot playing with his gun. Though se3veral hundred of the guns have been misplaced by pilots over the years. A hole the size of a bullet can tear a plane apart at 450mph, and given that cops and military personnel who get much, much more training than this program provides still miss 80% of the time (when not on a moving plane), that's not a very wise recipe. I think people just like to complain.
A surprising number of people I've talked to recently don't care whether their existence is an objective or subjective one. I can't really wrap my mind around how that's not important to them. =/
If you flat-out ask people what they are concerned about in life, they'll give sound byte answers like "the economy," "Iraq," or something similarly trite. However, they can't be that worried, because even the most basic of followup questions, like "do you think the new stimulus bill will help?" asked in response to an answer of "the economy" will yield a confused facial expression and maybe a shoulder shrug. Apparently, worry and concern aren't so bad as to bother reading something or taking the time to form an opinion on your concerns.
What in the world can make a brown-eyed girl turn blue?
Culture put an end to human evolution some 5-10,000 years ago. Since then we've failed to develop any useful new traits... with armageddon right around the corner, I hope it was worth it. I just hope people aren't surprised when bears with no opposable thumbs and wolves who can't speak, much less write a good novel have us hiding in old burned-out warehouses and remnants of subway systems, eating rats and forgetting everything we gave up on evolution to learn.
Even after seven years, Morrowind is still a great PC game. I'm about to complain about something, but it doesn't deserve it's own paragraph, so it goes unrelatedly here. Cheddar is a horrible cheese. It fails in almost every category of desirability there is for a cheese, and yet Americans love it. Usually, I don't care for elitists, but this time I can see where they're coming from - eating extra sharp cheddar is like putting a dirty sock that was left outside during most of a humid autumnn season in your mouth, but harder and less enjoyable.
That's it. Yep. You waited all week for that. You = Fail. Oh well, maybe next time.
Edit: I don't read before I hit publish, and going back after the fact seems like cheating. But I will add that this post seemed uncharacteristically bitter for some reason - but again, it's been a tricky week.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Monday, Monday, Monday. You'll pay for the whole seat but you'll only need the EDGE.
Seth Godin recently wrote "Getting your ducks in a row is not nearly as powerful as actually doing something with your duck." At least I think he wrote it, I heard about it on Twitter so maybe he said it aloud and it could be really old. Either way the premise really struck me. We (humankind) spend a lot of time with our thumbs up our asses assembling the perfect collection of ducks before actually doing something with them. I see and do this all the time but I also see people break free. A few of us here on this blog have started a post of with "I didn't really have anything good to blah, blah, blah" and by the time the post is finished it might be a steaming pile of shit but at least it's a post. If I waited around until I had something brilliant and/or inspiring to say I'd be posting things 4 days late. Which brings me to my ducks.
Over the past few weeks I have acquired each of my ducks, lined them up very neatly, and shot or watched each one of them get shot directly in the face. In this metaphor (or is it a simile) the ducks are all the things I need to do my research, here after referred to as research ducks. I have either killed off or outsourced my personal life ducks. Take my wedding for example, I'm getting married in July. I know where it is and approximately when but I specifically asked to be "left out of the picture, unless needed". I think the rest of my personal life ducks were eaten by my research ducks.
Some of you may have noticed that I did not publish anything on Monday. If you didn't then these are not the droids you are looking for. I would like to take a moment to list all of shit that went wrong.
Over the past few weeks I have acquired each of my ducks, lined them up very neatly, and shot or watched each one of them get shot directly in the face. In this metaphor (or is it a simile) the ducks are all the things I need to do my research, here after referred to as research ducks. I have either killed off or outsourced my personal life ducks. Take my wedding for example, I'm getting married in July. I know where it is and approximately when but I specifically asked to be "left out of the picture, unless needed". I think the rest of my personal life ducks were eaten by my research ducks.
Some of you may have noticed that I did not publish anything on Monday. If you didn't then these are not the droids you are looking for. I would like to take a moment to list all of shit that went wrong.
- Nitrogen gas was shut down in our building (until July) about a month ago, don't worry we have LN2 tanks to use as backups. I use nitrogen for all of my experiments, 15L/hr all day long.
- The most important part of my fancy ass new instrument needed to be replaced (we just bought it in October, thought it didn't start working reliably until December).
- Technicians took 5 days longer than expected to replace the part.
- Due to shut down of N2 gas the pressure at the LN2 filling station is higher than normal which is preventing me from filling my LN2 tank that's supposed to replace the building N2. Fucking useless.
- After my instrument was finally fixed a visiting collaborator showed up to use it all week.
- My boss has had his foot up my ass because my current results don't tell a good story. On a related note I specifically did not show him this data because it did not tell a good story, he came over to my desk and started looking at it then began complaining. He also complained about things I didn't do that he told me NOT to do and things I did do that he asked me to do. That was not a typo.
- I'm supposed to present at a conference at the end of next week which I was planning on having some new data for, see items 1-5.
So there I was running ahead of schedule when all of my ducks were taken from the row I put them in and unceremoniously drowned in a bucket of luke warm water. I went with luke warm water because I figured my hand would get cold after the first duck. The mental image of that statement just made me sad. First off I don't think I could drown a duck, a cat maybe but not a duck, and secondly it reminded me of all of the shit I'm in regarding my research.
Which brings me back to doing something with the duck I have left. I think that's the instrument but I stil have a lot of samples which are probably ducks also. So fuck'em I'm just running them without nitrogen, like a rebel, and do so in the off hours of the day, also rebel like. Every time I think of Mr. Godin's comment, specifically the part about doing something with the duck, I always picture me throwing it at someone. That makes me smile.
Finally on ADHD. I think if we euthanized all of the people with ADHD and all of people who don't believe in it we'd reach some sort of universal balance. I suppose that doesn't cover the issue of skyrocketing health care cost, euthanizing peeps is probably expensive. I'd like to see three supporting arguments and three dissenting arguments with citations (wikipeida is cool).
Sunday, April 26, 2009
I want you to take a moment and think about someone (friend, significant other, whomever) saying your name. What comes to mind, if anything?
I can honestly say I really can't think of anything. I don't imagine my face and how I look now or anything like that. I am wondering what other people think of or see when they do the same thing.
I tried thinking of friends and doing this same thing. What do I think of when I think of (insert name)? It is less of an impression I have of this person and has more to do with my memories of him or her.
I know lots of folks who say things like "I'm a writer/filmmaker/scientist." However, maybe there is a flaw in this mentality or maybe it is just a flaw of language.
I am not a writer. I am a person who writes.
I am not an engineer. I am a person who studies engineering.
I am not a girlfriend. I am a person in a relationship.
I know the second sentences sound a little stand-offish or maybe even pretentious, but are they any worse than declaring you are something you do for maybe a small percentage of your life. I am talking about being versus doing here. I know have not payed homage to several classical philosophers, Rousseau, and probably Sartre as I am writing this, so I'll probably have to add some addenda after posting.
What I am also getting at is the identification of being through one activity also implies the exclusion of other activities. I'll give you a real-life, lavacaflaca example:
I am listening to my brand new engineering dean give a talk at a welcome event for him. He talks about how engineering is so great because it can prepare you for any career path..."except maybe poetry" he says, followed by, "I hope there aren't any poets in the audience." Now, I smiled at that and internally rolled my eyes. First, because I won a poetry award at this same university about 4 years ago. Second, because it was just a silly comment to make.
Part two, my old comp lit colleagues ask what I am up to and I tell them. The response I usually get is, "don't lose your comp-littiness" or something similar.
The whole thing makes me want to shout, "the two aren't mutually exclusive!!!" I am a person who invests a lot of my self-worth into the work that I do, but I will not identify myself as being any one thing to the exclusion of all others. What I mean is first I am a person; then I do things as that person. The consequences of that may be anywhere from great to awful - such as this post.
Not everything is being articulated as I want it to be, so, uh, my apologies. I just wanted to start a conversation. Still trying to hash this mess out.
PS: I am not trying to be funny. =)
I can honestly say I really can't think of anything. I don't imagine my face and how I look now or anything like that. I am wondering what other people think of or see when they do the same thing.
I tried thinking of friends and doing this same thing. What do I think of when I think of (insert name)? It is less of an impression I have of this person and has more to do with my memories of him or her.
I know lots of folks who say things like "I'm a writer/filmmaker/scientist." However, maybe there is a flaw in this mentality or maybe it is just a flaw of language.
I am not a writer. I am a person who writes.
I am not an engineer. I am a person who studies engineering.
I am not a girlfriend. I am a person in a relationship.
I know the second sentences sound a little stand-offish or maybe even pretentious, but are they any worse than declaring you are something you do for maybe a small percentage of your life. I am talking about being versus doing here. I know have not payed homage to several classical philosophers, Rousseau, and probably Sartre as I am writing this, so I'll probably have to add some addenda after posting.
What I am also getting at is the identification of being through one activity also implies the exclusion of other activities. I'll give you a real-life, lavacaflaca example:
I am listening to my brand new engineering dean give a talk at a welcome event for him. He talks about how engineering is so great because it can prepare you for any career path..."except maybe poetry" he says, followed by, "I hope there aren't any poets in the audience." Now, I smiled at that and internally rolled my eyes. First, because I won a poetry award at this same university about 4 years ago. Second, because it was just a silly comment to make.
Part two, my old comp lit colleagues ask what I am up to and I tell them. The response I usually get is, "don't lose your comp-littiness" or something similar.
The whole thing makes me want to shout, "the two aren't mutually exclusive!!!" I am a person who invests a lot of my self-worth into the work that I do, but I will not identify myself as being any one thing to the exclusion of all others. What I mean is first I am a person; then I do things as that person. The consequences of that may be anywhere from great to awful - such as this post.
Not everything is being articulated as I want it to be, so, uh, my apologies. I just wanted to start a conversation. Still trying to hash this mess out.
PS: I am not trying to be funny. =)
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Welcome to Saturday / Allopathic machines
I will write here on Saturdays and I will write about eccentric trends, movements and people. Less often I will describe odd professions from by-gone eras and offer challenges based on the skills required to perform these jobs. Even less frequently holidays will declared to commemorate lesser known
persons or events that are worthy of celebration.
In the wee hours of the morning, television stops airing programs interupted by commercials
and just airs commercials. It is at this time that people give up on
conscious thought. The employed resign themselves to sleep and those less encumbered by success partake of other methods. On our TV's, whether we notice or not, the infomercials
queue up. Frenetic salesmen step into view for a half-hour at a time to present your problems and then merciully offer a sollution until the sun again
rises and the world resumes the parts of our lives suitable for print.
I own the night.
It is to these dark hours that we have relegated the salesmen of exercise machines, though our mania for a half-assed fitness stays with us throughout the day. It would seem our modern lives, uniquely sedentary and uniquely full of unhealthy food, created the need for exercise equipment but this is not so. A century ago well-to-do men and their wives worried about
their well-being and an eccentric group of hucksters came to invent bizarre and fantastic fitness machines.
Feel the burn!!
In an age before anti-biotics, doctors typically ordered various allopathic treatments such as rest. The wealthy spent time at a variety of sanatoriums where they could rest and enjoy the
first health foods created. Of course, rest improves the immune system so there was some sense in this, at least more sense than draining copious amounts of blood. Progress marches on! This is the time in which W.K. Kellogg commercialized the diet of Seventh Day Adventists into popular cereals. The Adventist blending of spirituality, health, pseudoscience and various grains into a health food typified the approach to well-being in this era.
Not to be outdone, Europeans like Gustav Zander began harnessing the power of pulley wheels, fly-belts and other high technology into the service of health. Zander's machines (one of which is pictured above) are interesting in how similar they are to our modern machines but even more interesting is how they are not. The machines required their users to do very little. Mark Twain's observation that the machines offered "vigorous exercise, and others do it for you" seems to explain their popularity.
The ideal of fitness was different then, too. Plenty of lower-class working men could perform physically demanding tasks for long periods of time and so a more respectable notion of being fit was required. While physical labor requires an actual expenditure of energy, doctors of the time imagined that the body's energy could only be released through more controlled and regulated forces. This thinking was common. Kellogg and other sanatarium proprietors offered masssages for this purpose and the machines Zander invented claimed to perfect the art by making it into a science. Well, a psuedoscience but hey a doctor's gotta get paid somehow. The various belts and disks that rubbed patiets were designed to raise latent energies from patients. Presumably the patients then used these energies to sit around and um, be rich I guess. The carefully controlled, precise belts or wheels offered an unparallleled opportunity to increase the body's overall health.
Many of Zander's machines that involved pulleys and required actual exertion to use are sold today. We think of exercise differently than previous generations and certainly exercise machines have been refined to be more useful, but the motivations behind their use have remained more or less the same. Our fear of a sedentary lifestyle and pursuit of well-being through a variety of machines, pills and powders is quite a bit older than many would suspect. Friday, April 24, 2009
I am full of noises
Well, that was certainly an interesting Thursday. I mean, how am I supposed to follow that up? I spent all stupid Wednesday drinking coffee in a coffee shop and writing down things on coffee stained paper. You know, like a respectable writer ought to be doing on a Wednesday.
Then Thursday happened, and things went Bananas. At LEAST one of us offended at LEAST one other of us, maybe like a million. I don't remember how many of you there are. Anyway, the whole thing was strange and drama filled and WAY faster than it should have. I, for one, blame the broadband internets . Anyway, this meant I spent all day Thursday coming up with something else. Surely we had left the land of intellectual pleasant introductions, and entered the sphere of calling each other “worse than Hitler”. Now that's blogging!
But then it turns out that wasn't even the case, and everyone was actually a decent human being with just slightly different viewpoints on what was funny. Crap, that's very nearly a life lesson. You jerks trying to teach me something? I do not appreciate your efforts. I spend all freaking day at school learning stuff, I don't need no website full of “unique individuals” with “varying viewpoints and life experiences” trying to give me new perspective in life. If I wanted new perspective in life, I'd stop slouching.
Seriously though, I have no freaking idea what to write about now. None. You know what that means? That means the post goes up late.
---- 16 hours pass, bunny d feels well rested ----
So, where are we now? Well, one week down and we've already scared someone off. Maybe this IS a reality TeeVee show. Ugh, I feel dirty.
---- a shower later ----
Alright, so Poser is gone. We shall not speak ill of the dead. Seriously, nobody feel bad about what happened. It's the internet, if you're not offending anybody, your computer might have just crashed. What we shall do instead is celebrate the arrival of a new voice on the blog. I shall tell you nothing of this person, except that I've always wanted there to be an 8th day of the week so that he could be part of our horrible machine. Like Snapple, he is made of the best stuff on earth. He is the new patron saint of Saturdays.
Ok, so I really did want to write about writing. It's sort of a fascination of mine. After all, we appear to be the only species that does it. But I mean, what is it to be a writer?
A hero of mine was once asked, “What does it take to be a writer in America?”. Without a moments hesitation, he replied “An audience”. I love that statement, because I think it's true.
All forms of writing are just storytelling. Journalism, novels, sci-fi, romance, bromance, biographies, scientific papers, poems, mathematical proofs, nothing but stories. The only difference between the kinds of writing has to do with the amount of and kind of words you use. But, without an audience, what are you doing? Just practicing, I say.
Big words don't make a writer. Sure, variety of language can spice up a piece, make it more colorful. But I think far too many writers try and justify their job-title by using a certain kind of language. I know for certain scientists and doctors do this. I can't tell you the number of times I've read a paragraph 3 or 4 times trying to get what the author was really saying. “OH!” I say to myself, “well why didn't he say so!”. Obfuscate. It's the same reason doctors still describe things in latin. They don't want to lose the mystique.
I want to say more about this topic, but it's getting kind of late. I honestly spent all week looking forward to writing some grand piece, and then just didn't have time. *waves paper in the air* These were the notes. I made notes. Maybe next week you'll get your chance, notes. It's finals week for some people, and if you are one of those people, good luck. And remember what the master said, “If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”
~bd
Then Thursday happened, and things went Bananas. At LEAST one of us offended at LEAST one other of us, maybe like a million. I don't remember how many of you there are. Anyway, the whole thing was strange and drama filled and WAY faster than it should have. I, for one, blame the broadband internets . Anyway, this meant I spent all day Thursday coming up with something else. Surely we had left the land of intellectual pleasant introductions, and entered the sphere of calling each other “worse than Hitler”. Now that's blogging!
But then it turns out that wasn't even the case, and everyone was actually a decent human being with just slightly different viewpoints on what was funny. Crap, that's very nearly a life lesson. You jerks trying to teach me something? I do not appreciate your efforts. I spend all freaking day at school learning stuff, I don't need no website full of “unique individuals” with “varying viewpoints and life experiences” trying to give me new perspective in life. If I wanted new perspective in life, I'd stop slouching.
Seriously though, I have no freaking idea what to write about now. None. You know what that means? That means the post goes up late.
---- 16 hours pass, bunny d feels well rested ----
So, where are we now? Well, one week down and we've already scared someone off. Maybe this IS a reality TeeVee show. Ugh, I feel dirty.
---- a shower later ----
Alright, so Poser is gone. We shall not speak ill of the dead. Seriously, nobody feel bad about what happened. It's the internet, if you're not offending anybody, your computer might have just crashed. What we shall do instead is celebrate the arrival of a new voice on the blog. I shall tell you nothing of this person, except that I've always wanted there to be an 8th day of the week so that he could be part of our horrible machine. Like Snapple, he is made of the best stuff on earth. He is the new patron saint of Saturdays.
Ok, so I really did want to write about writing. It's sort of a fascination of mine. After all, we appear to be the only species that does it. But I mean, what is it to be a writer?
A hero of mine was once asked, “What does it take to be a writer in America?”. Without a moments hesitation, he replied “An audience”. I love that statement, because I think it's true.
All forms of writing are just storytelling. Journalism, novels, sci-fi, romance, bromance, biographies, scientific papers, poems, mathematical proofs, nothing but stories. The only difference between the kinds of writing has to do with the amount of and kind of words you use. But, without an audience, what are you doing? Just practicing, I say.
Big words don't make a writer. Sure, variety of language can spice up a piece, make it more colorful. But I think far too many writers try and justify their job-title by using a certain kind of language. I know for certain scientists and doctors do this. I can't tell you the number of times I've read a paragraph 3 or 4 times trying to get what the author was really saying. “OH!” I say to myself, “well why didn't he say so!”. Obfuscate. It's the same reason doctors still describe things in latin. They don't want to lose the mystique.
I want to say more about this topic, but it's getting kind of late. I honestly spent all week looking forward to writing some grand piece, and then just didn't have time. *waves paper in the air* These were the notes. I made notes. Maybe next week you'll get your chance, notes. It's finals week for some people, and if you are one of those people, good luck. And remember what the master said, “If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”
~bd
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Grinds My Gears
Lets take a moment to reflect a bit as I get my initial post rolling. Imagine ten people in your life that you have general conversation with during any given month. Assuming you are reading this blog, ten people outside of co-workers and/or people you know from the internet might be a stretch, so feel free to include them in this group for all accounts and purposes. Try to examine the moral fabric, civic mindedness, and overall well being of these people. Now ask yourself, how many of these people have discussed either themselves, their children, their friends, or their loved ones being plagued with ADHD.
Officially, it is estimated that 3-5% of Americans are afflicted with this “issue” however I am sure the unofficial claims are much higher than that. There’s always those kids at school who are on whatever drug because of their ADHD, or the guy at the office who is a total flake because of his ADHD. Hell, some pet owners are medicating their pets due to their ADHD. This disorder appears to be a growing epidemic throughout the country in this modern new world of ours, however, I am happy to report a breakthrough on this and many other social disorders plaguing our once great nation.
Through intense study and screening (actually observation, rationalization, and logic) it has become clear that the cause of these issues is actually: idiots. That’s right, idiots. Seriously, ADHD in kids? Everyone knows the real diagnosis is bad parenting. Your precious snowflake can’t behave in school because you are a turd of a parent. You have whimsical dreams that your child is perfect and should never be reprimanded so they can have the “perfect childhood” and your insecurity gives you the urge to be the perfect parent, so you are hesitant to reprimand your soon-to-be convict. These kids don’t have a chemical imbalance; they have a parent/parents who suck at life. The real prescription for this should be a kick in the ass to the parents. I am sick of my insurance cost going up to cover blanket prescriptions of Prozac because parents are lazy.
Remember those people we thought about in the beginning of this blog? Well, I would bet the farm that those who scored not-so-well in our examination are the same ones with a direct link to ADHD. Their kids are shitheads because ma/pa are stoned and think shitting on the wall is funny, so the kids do the same thing in school. Through the extremely accurate and politically incorrect science of profiling and stereotyping, here are some reason’s why you suck at a parent and your kid just nuked the cat in the microwave.
1) You are a single parent. (Almost 33% of you are single parents by design, because you wanted to have a baby as a trophy. You suck and you are destroying this world. Your ovaries should be judo chopped.) Your kid is being watched by:
- A) Your parents, and they didn’t exactly raise a prize in you, now did they single parent? The cycle perpetuates.
- B) Some 14 year old because you are out at the bar now that you lost your pregnancy weight. You have either “I need to feel pretty” issues that make you a whore, or you are out trying to find some sucker who will help you change the diapers. To be fair here, if you are male, you are either trying to “keep it real” which means you are too immature to handle parenthood or you are an idiot and need to be sterilized.
- C) You are a 14 year old. In this case, you are with your parents, and they are grooming another gem
- D) Nobody. Given the above, this is probably the best option.
2) You are clever enough to fornicate (That is pre-programmed in us, so don’t feel as if you achieved anything) and that’s about it. If survival of the fittest still applied in this day and age, you would have been taken out by earthworms or mosquitoes. Either you are hot enough to marry a rich business person or you found someone of equal caliber to you. If you married the rich person, they are never home because they hate their devil child and they are only interested in screwing you, not talking about what was said on The View or who laid the smack down in the ring on Monday night. True, they work all the time (they are successful) but they have to in order to pay for the divorce upcoming or to quench your thirst for “Juicy” pants for you and your 5 year old. They do not love you. They wish they had you sign a pre-nup.
3) You are a complete waste of space. Your role as a consumer is outweighed by your burden placed on society. You either hate work, have no work, or have a job that a monkey could do. Your motivation/desire to be productive is not existent. You are extremely selfish. When you told your friends you were going to have a kid, they could only say congratulations because they were really thinking “OMFG I can’t believe it’s legal for these people to procreate.” You can’t fight the feeling on the inside, however, that you know you are 10th percentile in everything you do. This is why you try to masturbate your inner worth by letting your child get away with murder. As long as your kid is happy, you feel like a great parent. This is your only sense of satisfaction besides food that comes in a box or spreading your legs to alcohol saturated one liners. You do not worry about what will happen when your child grows up because you have never really thought about the future. If you had, you would have realized that putting Lucky Charms in a bowl on the floor next to the dog food bowl was a bad idea.
4) You are a broken arrow. Something traumatic happened in your life and you didn’t have the fortitude to get over it. Life is so easy these days that you managed to stay in the quiver. It’s sad that your child reminds you of your significant other who died in the car crash. That doesn’t mean you give the little shit head anything they want. Ok, it sucks your step father touched you in your “no zone” I do not condone that. It screwed up your life forever. Well, if your life has spiraled out of control why the hell did you have the urge to bring others into it? Why, because you thought it would bring you happiness. This thought process is why you are officially classified as a broken arrow.
I can go on with this list, however I think I have the majority of the reasons covered. Bottom line, ADHD is bullshit. 50 years ago, this didn't exist. Why? Because you would have kicked your kid’s ass when they needed it, that’s why. If you didn’t, your neighbor would have, or the teachers would have. People are animals. If you don’t train your dog to shit outside, it will keep shitting on your carpet. The same goes with your little precious. Many will say that this is not my business and they have the right to raise their children how they want. Well, guess what, I am paying for part of the Prozac, and I will pay for part of the meals at the prison. My tax dollars will fund the welfare and the child services. So it’s starting to piss me off. I don’t give a shit if your kid worships a plastic santa and wears a pound of black makeup and bobby pins; this is not a drain on my checking account. This place is getting crowded and I am tired of funding this disaster. This brings me to a future topic which I will address at another time: The Mandatory Procreation Competency Test, or the MPC Test.
Please, if you know of anyone battling ADHD with their child, do them a favor; have them read this.
-thisisafakename
Editors Note: thisisafakename was unable to post this week. I shall not go into details as I don't have them. Obviously, thisisafakename WAS able to compose an article. He just couldn't post it. So I'm posting it for him with this pseudonym. Good times ~bd
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Hi team.
I decided to join this motley bunch because I like thinking about what stuff means. I like talking about what stuff means too, but generally possess the social skills to keep it toned down. Unless of course someone makes the mistake of mentioning one of my special dangerous trigger topics. If you want to avoid hearing me expound in animated fashion until syntax drips from your ears, you may want to avoid bringing up...
politics
the environment
cognition
the economy
linguistics
semantics
psychology
metaphor
fractals
chaos
complexity theory
the war on drugs
concepts
categories
paradox
education
the do-it-yourself movement
marine iguanas
philospphy
psychotropic substances
theory of mind
sustainability
narrative
duck-billed platypi
the underlying context (of just about anything)
sociology
social insects
idioms
taoism
speculative fiction
the stupidity of pandas
science!
symbolism
irony
technology & the internets
creativity
big complicated systems like healthcare or public transit
local communities
neuroscience
ornithopters
select cartoons from childhood
black-and-white thinking
steampunk
intelligence
zombie apocolypses
speech language pathology
the Coming Singularity
home-made or archaic weapons
alternative energy
That's pretty much it. Sports are pretty safe. I assume that most of the topics I'll choose to write about will fit into the above list in at least some way.
I have a bachelor's in psychology/linguistics and I'm working on a master's in speech-language pathology. Many of my more 'content-driven' posts will probably be along those lines. For example, today I was planning to post a semantic analysis of the lexical paradoxes employed in the Tao te Ching. However, I've been swamped this week by papers and tests... I've decided to rant about Captain Planet instead.
...
[On a sad personal note, everything but the pictures is straight from memory.]
Oh, Captain Planet... When I was a kid, I really loved the *idea* of captain planet, but even at the time was forced to confront the dissonance of the show's reality conflicting with what it could have been.
A superhero out to save the environment that needed the help from a group of multicultural everyday kids like me? Sign me up on recycled post-consumer paper!
Captain Planet looked cool, at least in a Vanilla Ice sort of way. All his planeteers had rings which gave them special super-powers, Gaia and that Russian chick were both pretty hot, and they had a solar-powered jet. The show had such potential for badass, especially in the mind of a boy raised on almond milk and soy-cheese.
Sadly, the execution left something to be desired. The plots hatched by the various eco-villians were always tragically contrived, things like creating oil spills so that pig-faced guy could sell snow-cones to the eco-volunteers who showed up to clean the seabirds. Even to my 9-year-old brain, it seemed as though the critical polluting aspect of each plan was often tangential or unnecessary.
Captain Plunder: "So, you have finally uncovered my plot to save millions in high-rise construction costs by replacing all the low-cost concrete with the hardened tears of baby koalas? Curse you, planeteers!"
My grievances continue:
- The earthjet.
They spent way too much time flying around in that thing without blowing things up. It didn't even have missiles. I can understand trying to keep things green and low-tech, but it could have at least fired rabid wombats or something.
- Gaia.
She was hot, don't get me wrong, but she'd just follow them around all the time whining and asking them to do crap. And let's be honest: it was kinda like their mom was sending them on their super-hero missions.
- Mati.
Poor, poor, Mati. It wasn't enough that he came from a persecuted indigenous culture in an educationally and economically-disadvantaged region of the globe. Of course not. What got me was that his amazing earth-saving ring superpower was... heart.
To receive rings, the Planeteers must all have been exceptional children.
Picture this: You've struggled your whole life to overcome hardship. You taught yourself to read by the age of 4. Strangled poachers and old-growth loggers with your bare hands at the age of 6. Educated slash-and-burn farmers in the benefits of bio-char farming by the age of 8. Started your own micro-finance organization funding the renewable harvesting of rainforest products by autonomous indiginous collectives by the age of 10.
Finally, by the age of 12, you are chosen by the EARTH MOTHER HERSELF to literally save the world, and you discover that while your fellow planeteers literally harness the POWER OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS to fight evil, you're stuck playing with your monkey in the back of the earthjet. Wasn't the fifth alchemical element supposed to be phlogostin or aether or something? The American kid can throw fireballs, the African kid makes earthquakes for fun, and you, you can send hummingbirds for help. Great.
That was the worst part, too. In order to highlight Mati's powers of animal empathy (in nearly every episode), he had to get trapped and captured ALL THE TIME.
"Oh no, I am trapped in a net cleverly crafted from plastic 6-pack rings that will never biodegrade on their own! How will I escape? I know, I will ask that Gibbon sitting on that log to go for help!"
"Oh no, I have been locked in this styrofoam-cup factory overnight and I am afraid of the dark! How will I ever see my friends again? I know, I will ask that river-dolphin in the break room to go for help!"
"Oh no, I am trapped in 30-year zero-down variable-rate 'liar-loan' mortgage about to roll over to 25% interest and I already possess negative equity, whatever should I do? I know, I will ask the snow-leopard cub at the local credit union to go for help!"
And so on.
On a final note, the above picture I found states that his powers include THE UNIQUE HEALING POWER OF RAINFOREST PLANTS. These days big pharma would be on him like potatoes on chips. They're patenting everything they can find down there.
... It was pretty cool when Captain Planet trucked shit up, though.
Happy earth day.
-odds
I decided to join this motley bunch because I like thinking about what stuff means. I like talking about what stuff means too, but generally possess the social skills to keep it toned down. Unless of course someone makes the mistake of mentioning one of my special dangerous trigger topics. If you want to avoid hearing me expound in animated fashion until syntax drips from your ears, you may want to avoid bringing up...
politics
the environment
cognition
the economy
linguistics
semantics
psychology
metaphor
fractals
chaos
complexity theory
the war on drugs
concepts
categories
paradox
education
the do-it-yourself movement
marine iguanas
philospphy
psychotropic substances
theory of mind
sustainability
narrative
duck-billed platypi
the underlying context (of just about anything)
sociology
social insects
idioms
taoism
speculative fiction
the stupidity of pandas
science!
symbolism
irony
technology & the internets
creativity
big complicated systems like healthcare or public transit
local communities
neuroscience
ornithopters
select cartoons from childhood
black-and-white thinking
steampunk
intelligence
zombie apocolypses
speech language pathology
the Coming Singularity
home-made or archaic weapons
alternative energy
That's pretty much it. Sports are pretty safe. I assume that most of the topics I'll choose to write about will fit into the above list in at least some way.
I have a bachelor's in psychology/linguistics and I'm working on a master's in speech-language pathology. Many of my more 'content-driven' posts will probably be along those lines. For example, today I was planning to post a semantic analysis of the lexical paradoxes employed in the Tao te Ching. However, I've been swamped this week by papers and tests... I've decided to rant about Captain Planet instead.
...
[On a sad personal note, everything but the pictures is straight from memory.]
Oh, Captain Planet... When I was a kid, I really loved the *idea* of captain planet, but even at the time was forced to confront the dissonance of the show's reality conflicting with what it could have been.
A superhero out to save the environment that needed the help from a group of multicultural everyday kids like me? Sign me up on recycled post-consumer paper!
Captain Planet looked cool, at least in a Vanilla Ice sort of way. All his planeteers had rings which gave them special super-powers, Gaia and that Russian chick were both pretty hot, and they had a solar-powered jet. The show had such potential for badass, especially in the mind of a boy raised on almond milk and soy-cheese.
Sadly, the execution left something to be desired. The plots hatched by the various eco-villians were always tragically contrived, things like creating oil spills so that pig-faced guy could sell snow-cones to the eco-volunteers who showed up to clean the seabirds. Even to my 9-year-old brain, it seemed as though the critical polluting aspect of each plan was often tangential or unnecessary.
Captain Plunder: "So, you have finally uncovered my plot to save millions in high-rise construction costs by replacing all the low-cost concrete with the hardened tears of baby koalas? Curse you, planeteers!"
My grievances continue:
- The earthjet.
They spent way too much time flying around in that thing without blowing things up. It didn't even have missiles. I can understand trying to keep things green and low-tech, but it could have at least fired rabid wombats or something.
- Gaia.
She was hot, don't get me wrong, but she'd just follow them around all the time whining and asking them to do crap. And let's be honest: it was kinda like their mom was sending them on their super-hero missions.
- Mati.
Poor, poor, Mati. It wasn't enough that he came from a persecuted indigenous culture in an educationally and economically-disadvantaged region of the globe. Of course not. What got me was that his amazing earth-saving ring superpower was... heart.
To receive rings, the Planeteers must all have been exceptional children.
Picture this: You've struggled your whole life to overcome hardship. You taught yourself to read by the age of 4. Strangled poachers and old-growth loggers with your bare hands at the age of 6. Educated slash-and-burn farmers in the benefits of bio-char farming by the age of 8. Started your own micro-finance organization funding the renewable harvesting of rainforest products by autonomous indiginous collectives by the age of 10.
Finally, by the age of 12, you are chosen by the EARTH MOTHER HERSELF to literally save the world, and you discover that while your fellow planeteers literally harness the POWER OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS to fight evil, you're stuck playing with your monkey in the back of the earthjet. Wasn't the fifth alchemical element supposed to be phlogostin or aether or something? The American kid can throw fireballs, the African kid makes earthquakes for fun, and you, you can send hummingbirds for help. Great.
That was the worst part, too. In order to highlight Mati's powers of animal empathy (in nearly every episode), he had to get trapped and captured ALL THE TIME.
"Oh no, I am trapped in a net cleverly crafted from plastic 6-pack rings that will never biodegrade on their own! How will I escape? I know, I will ask that Gibbon sitting on that log to go for help!"
"Oh no, I have been locked in this styrofoam-cup factory overnight and I am afraid of the dark! How will I ever see my friends again? I know, I will ask that river-dolphin in the break room to go for help!"
"Oh no, I am trapped in 30-year zero-down variable-rate 'liar-loan' mortgage about to roll over to 25% interest and I already possess negative equity, whatever should I do? I know, I will ask the snow-leopard cub at the local credit union to go for help!"
And so on.
On a final note, the above picture I found states that his powers include THE UNIQUE HEALING POWER OF RAINFOREST PLANTS. These days big pharma would be on him like potatoes on chips. They're patenting everything they can find down there.
... It was pretty cool when Captain Planet trucked shit up, though.
Happy earth day.
-odds
Monday, April 20, 2009
And render unto Guy what is Guy's...
I don’t plan to die any time soon, so I suppose a “lighter” first post is permissible. Just a little something to let the folks at home know where I’m coming from, and a hope that it won’t be until the second week that people feel it’s okay to skip reading Tuesday’s posts.
I’m Guy. It’s pretty much an ideophone if you say it as a soft exhalation. I’m a moral philosopher and cultural anthropologist - and easily so, since neither of those really mean anything. Basically, I get to worry about everything in so far as how it is interrelated, how systems interact, what the psychological, moral, and cultural influences behind, and implications of, any given human action are, and ultimately to muddle through the confusing mess of lens filters and venn diagrams that I call “life.” Don’t confuse that with the “I have a real job and friends and a significant other and hobbies and dreams and ambitions and such” kind of life. No, I just mean my heart pumps blood and if I keep putting enough sugar and caffeine in my face-hole everyday, my brain will continue to animate and operate my fleshy hull, so that I can do it all over again the next day.
In no particular order: I like pie, but not cherry pie, though I usually do like cherries, I have 145 lbs of grip strength in my right hand, I’ve seen about 25-35 ghosts in my lifetime, but they were all within the same 45 minutes or so, I like snow crab legs more than lobster tail, and I’m hoping that the apocalypse means I’ll get to live in an underground house for a few years eating moss and vermin I scavenge in the over-world until I die defending my homestead from roaming bands of Mad Max fans and football hooligans. Also, I like tigers.
I have a nice, serious post I was going to drop on you today, but I don’t want to leave Bunny holding the rope when someone jumps ship the first week because Guy is out of his freakin’ mind, where by “his freakin’ mind” they’ll mean “touch with reality.”
Instead, I’ll just say it’s been a while since I blogged and that's yet another reason I’m excited for this organized mess. And I’m happy to be aboard. TTFN.
I’m Guy. It’s pretty much an ideophone if you say it as a soft exhalation. I’m a moral philosopher and cultural anthropologist - and easily so, since neither of those really mean anything. Basically, I get to worry about everything in so far as how it is interrelated, how systems interact, what the psychological, moral, and cultural influences behind, and implications of, any given human action are, and ultimately to muddle through the confusing mess of lens filters and venn diagrams that I call “life.” Don’t confuse that with the “I have a real job and friends and a significant other and hobbies and dreams and ambitions and such” kind of life. No, I just mean my heart pumps blood and if I keep putting enough sugar and caffeine in my face-hole everyday, my brain will continue to animate and operate my fleshy hull, so that I can do it all over again the next day.
In no particular order: I like pie, but not cherry pie, though I usually do like cherries, I have 145 lbs of grip strength in my right hand, I’ve seen about 25-35 ghosts in my lifetime, but they were all within the same 45 minutes or so, I like snow crab legs more than lobster tail, and I’m hoping that the apocalypse means I’ll get to live in an underground house for a few years eating moss and vermin I scavenge in the over-world until I die defending my homestead from roaming bands of Mad Max fans and football hooligans. Also, I like tigers.
I have a nice, serious post I was going to drop on you today, but I don’t want to leave Bunny holding the rope when someone jumps ship the first week because Guy is out of his freakin’ mind, where by “his freakin’ mind” they’ll mean “touch with reality.”
Instead, I’ll just say it’s been a while since I blogged and that's yet another reason I’m excited for this organized mess. And I’m happy to be aboard. TTFN.
Recked em, damn near killed em.
Signing in to write this post was my first time viewing the blog. The graphic is fucking awesome. It's just the right amount of dark and gritty. The monkey looks like he has a shank hidden in that typewriter, he's done hard time I'm sure of it. I bet he uses the typewriter to crank out ransom notes or bomb threats.
I'm at a total fucking loss for what to write about. I guess I'll lame out with my specs. I have a back ground in engineering and mayhem. I spent five years in a frozen wasteland drinking myself to death. My war cry was "Don't worry my mom is a doctor." You have no idea how much that phrase will make friends and strangers alike complacent in what is obviously a dangerous and/or illegal activity. Invoking ideas of physicians must make people feel like a competent educated person is in charge and everything will be OK. Rarely was it "OK", a drunken mob is an easy thing to control and you can do a lot of damage with it. On the receiving end, the place I lived in was firebombed at one point. Molotov Cocktail, diesel fuel and a sock stuffed in a 40, you don't need a GED to come up with that. We learned from the police that we were pretty lucky the moron used diesel fuel, straight gas would have made more of an explosion possibly killing a few people. I should also mention the second most important phrase, "I'm not from the area, I didn't know." That will get you off the hook for a lot of the stuff you did after saying "Don't worry my mom is a doctor."
Oh shit it's after midnight. Hang on I'll post this from the Central Time zone.
I'm at a total fucking loss for what to write about. I guess I'll lame out with my specs. I have a back ground in engineering and mayhem. I spent five years in a frozen wasteland drinking myself to death. My war cry was "Don't worry my mom is a doctor." You have no idea how much that phrase will make friends and strangers alike complacent in what is obviously a dangerous and/or illegal activity. Invoking ideas of physicians must make people feel like a competent educated person is in charge and everything will be OK. Rarely was it "OK", a drunken mob is an easy thing to control and you can do a lot of damage with it. On the receiving end, the place I lived in was firebombed at one point. Molotov Cocktail, diesel fuel and a sock stuffed in a 40, you don't need a GED to come up with that. We learned from the police that we were pretty lucky the moron used diesel fuel, straight gas would have made more of an explosion possibly killing a few people. I should also mention the second most important phrase, "I'm not from the area, I didn't know." That will get you off the hook for a lot of the stuff you did after saying "Don't worry my mom is a doctor."
Oh shit it's after midnight. Hang on I'll post this from the Central Time zone.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Ground rules
I have a little confession to make. I don't read blogs. I am serious. Well, I mean, I do have one friend who has one and about every three months or so I'll look at hers - but that is it! Really!
I guess I really have mixed feelings about them. Can they be a fun and interesting outlet of journalism? Are they the new media creative non-fiction? Maybe. The problem is, when I hear about bloggers interviewed on the news I think, "Who the $*&% cares about what this person is saying about (insert topic of the moment here)? They're not an expert or journalist." I always got the impression that the blogosphere (ick!) was full of self important adolescent-adults who for some reason or another thought every one just had to hear what they had to say.
So, it is with great curiosity and a little discomfort that I am now writing on a blog. Part of me is thinking, "damnit, how did I get into this?" The truth is I needed no prodding at all. I heard about it and thought the idea sounded kind of fun. I am coming to grips with the fact that I just might fall into that category elaborated upon above.
Since I have no experience writing or reading blogs, I had that moment that every one who has ever written something on a deadline has had; you know, that ohcrapwhatthehellamigoingtowriteabout moment! I asked myself, what makes a good blog? I answered, "well, shit v. i don't know - you would have an idea if you read blogs, eh?"
I did not spend all night reading blogs to write about what makes a good blog. That would be weird. Instead, I gave some thought about what boundaries I would set for myself to make this as little like the horrid conception of blogs that I have as possible and maybe to make it more interesting for whomever is reading the blog.
So far, here are my ground rules:
1) I will not speak of my relationship in a negative way. Not even in passing. No one is interested and that is just plain uncool. Still, I imagine it could be tempting so I have to write this rule to keep myself honest.
2) I will not bring up the mundane tasks of my life in a facebook/myspace sort of way. This is not the place for me to talk in 1-2 sentences about what a hard week it was having 2 exams and 2 quizzes and that I am making kielbasa for dinner.
That is it? That is all I could think of? I really don't know if it is good enough. I doubt it will guarantee interesting writing. #3 could be to use the word "I" a little less because I'm already a little embarassed about the level to which I've used it in this post. I don't know.
I should be clear - I only intend these rules for me - everyone else can write about their kielbasa dinners to their hearts' content.
I guess I really have mixed feelings about them. Can they be a fun and interesting outlet of journalism? Are they the new media creative non-fiction? Maybe. The problem is, when I hear about bloggers interviewed on the news I think, "Who the $*&% cares about what this person is saying about (insert topic of the moment here)? They're not an expert or journalist." I always got the impression that the blogosphere (ick!) was full of self important adolescent-adults who for some reason or another thought every one just had to hear what they had to say.
So, it is with great curiosity and a little discomfort that I am now writing on a blog. Part of me is thinking, "damnit, how did I get into this?" The truth is I needed no prodding at all. I heard about it and thought the idea sounded kind of fun. I am coming to grips with the fact that I just might fall into that category elaborated upon above.
Since I have no experience writing or reading blogs, I had that moment that every one who has ever written something on a deadline has had; you know, that ohcrapwhatthehellamigoingtowriteabout moment! I asked myself, what makes a good blog? I answered, "well, shit v. i don't know - you would have an idea if you read blogs, eh?"
I did not spend all night reading blogs to write about what makes a good blog. That would be weird. Instead, I gave some thought about what boundaries I would set for myself to make this as little like the horrid conception of blogs that I have as possible and maybe to make it more interesting for whomever is reading the blog.
So far, here are my ground rules:
1) I will not speak of my relationship in a negative way. Not even in passing. No one is interested and that is just plain uncool. Still, I imagine it could be tempting so I have to write this rule to keep myself honest.
2) I will not bring up the mundane tasks of my life in a facebook/myspace sort of way. This is not the place for me to talk in 1-2 sentences about what a hard week it was having 2 exams and 2 quizzes and that I am making kielbasa for dinner.
That is it? That is all I could think of? I really don't know if it is good enough. I doubt it will guarantee interesting writing. #3 could be to use the word "I" a little less because I'm already a little embarassed about the level to which I've used it in this post. I don't know.
I should be clear - I only intend these rules for me - everyone else can write about their kielbasa dinners to their hearts' content.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Survivors Guide to Time Travelers
My high school science teacher once told me a theory of Stephen Hawkins, which was this: assuming time is infinite, time travel is impossible because we in our present lives are not inundated by an infinite amount of time travelers. I’m here to tell you that Mr. Hawkins is wrong, dangerously wrong. Time travelers walk amongst us. The following is a survivors guide to tourists from the future.
Protecting your genitals
It is important to set aside doubt. Time travelers walk amongst us, and not only that but they are extremely dangerous and/or annoying. Consider the following, unbeknownst to you, your great great great grandchild will be the next Hitler. Your life is living hell because every time traveler from your great great great grandchild’s generation is going to be going for your balls (or ovaries) in order to prevent his birth and the consequential horrible crimes against humanity.
Survival tips:
Never knowingly trust your genitals with time travelers no matter how attractive and/or convincing they may be.
Do not be fooled by pleas of logic. While thousands, even millions may die horrible deaths in the near to distant future, you have a right to your reproductive organs. Keep telling yourself that.
Purchase crotch armor. I’m not talking about sports gear, a plastic cup between infinitesimal hordes from the future and your tickle-me-Elmo isn’t going to cut it. Go medieval, chain mail doesn’t chafe that badly with liberal use of KY jelly.
So, you may have wondered why prostitutes and party clowns keep on trying to neuter you at inconvenient times, well now you know why. But knowing isn’t enough, its important to recognize you local time traveler before they get too close with their garden shears and coat hangers.
Spotting the Time Tourist
While it is important to recognize tourists from the future it is also important to recognize not all of them are dangerous.
Common and relatively harmless time tourists are:
daughters and sons you haven’t had yet
angry ex-wives you haven’t met
quizitive mother in laws of the ex-wives you haven’t met
neighbors twice removed
various unfortunate versions of yourself
confused members of countries that do not exist yet
Common but more dangerous future folk are:
door to door doctors
enlistment officers
refugees from zombie apocalypses
zombies from zombie apocalypses
genetically engineered furry’s
over zealous reenactors
conspiracy theorists with self fulfilling prophecies
gambrels
Christopher Lloyds
While most time travelers are relatively inconspicuous they do behave irregularly in little ways (to save you time I have personally ruled out freegans).
Tourist from the future will do little annoying things like:
Eating your pudding packs that we bought special for midnight snacks
poking you with sticks experimentally
making fun of you for the “fabric” cloths you wear
asking you to pose dramatically as they take pictures of you performing daily tasks (such as sleeping)
telling you how you are going to die of cancer even though you specifically ask them not to
convincing you to buy reams of lottery tickets that never win
(While there is much, much more to be said on the subjects of safety and time travelers, I am tired. I suspect my roommate is not have sex anymore so I’m going to go hit the hay.)
Friday, April 17, 2009
Humble Beginnings
Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Sun Tzu's Art of War. Bob Dylans Highway 61 Revisited. What do these three great compilations of the human mind, will, and soul have in common? Yes, they all greatly affected the world and cultures we live in. Yes, each has it's own set of devoted followers and die hard critics. And yes, each one of these authors at some point went by the nickname “Al”. However, the point I am trying to drive home is none of these. What ties these three great masterpieces inarguably and undebatable together is the sad fact that I didn't have anything to do with them.
In fact, as I look back on my time spent upon this little ball of dirt spinning around a mid-sized fusion reaction ninety two million, nine hundred fifty five thousand, eight hundred seventeen miles away, I can honestly say I haven't really gotten too much done yet. At least, less than I would have thought. For instance, I really thought I'd have this fantastic post ready for the first day of my new “blog project thingy”. Yet here it is, 1:22 in the morning, and I'm still trying to finish my own introduction. Shit.
Please don't get me wrong. I do not see myself a lazy man, or unsuccessful, or even unlucky. My research is progressing, slowly but steadily, towards a good end. I believe the work I do serves a greater purpose than my own. When I jokingly say after a lunch with friends, “time to get back to work, humanity isn't going to save itself”, a part of me actually believes it. And, upon a recent presentation of some data to my advisor, I saw a look of excitement in his eyes normally reserved for a fresh cup of cappuccino. “This is publishable stuff!” he tells me. “This is the exactly the direction you should be going!” he says. I take his words with me when I walk out of his office. I hold onto it all day, and am so damn proud of myself. I walk back into my office and shout “Eureka, I have earned a burrito!”. The Chinese fellow in my office turns to me and asks why. “Because”, I tell him while assuming a pose like a superhero in a comic, “today, I helped save the world with science.” Soon, I am in my local burrito eatery, and I am savoring my reward. A delicious chicken burrito filled with grilled onions and the hopes and dreams of children of tomorrow. I close my eyes and see the parade of beautiful girls wearing lab coats and large rimmed glasses carrying me through the streets shouting “A genius! Our savior! A keeper of his fellow man!”.
It is at this point, when upon I open my eyes, and I suddenly realize I locked my keys in the car. The next half hour I spend trying to find the phone number for a locksmith who is open on Easter. The next 80 dollars I spend is on that particular locksmith. He is a small man with a beer belly and a white service truck. In about 15 seconds he uses a small hand inflated heavy duty rubber balloon to pry open my passenger side door a crack, and then uses a 4 foot long slightly curved metal rod to reach in and hit the “door unlock” button. His wife, with her white jacket and small rimmed glasses, watches from inside the van. She is proud of him. I watch as they drive the van off into the sunset, and I am left alone.
Reflect with me. What I do is good work, but in all honesty, if I wasn't doing it somebody else would be. I work very hard, but I do not come into this field carrying some savant level mathematics abilities. In fact, if we want to get down and compare grades, you'll find mine are probably somewhere below the average “scientist who gets a parade thrown for him/her” threshold. This doesn't bother me. This is simply the hand I was dealt, and I've played it pretty good thus far. However, I really do have this drive to do something good, something that can be called a “life accomplishment”, something that no one else has done. And you know what? I just checked on google, and nobody has ever published the sentence “Eureka, I have earned a burrito!” to the web. Yet just here, today, I have done it TWICE so far. Here in lies the power of blogging, friends. Herein lies the keys to creation of sentences, perhaps even articles, that had never before existed. Who knows how long the internet, and subsequently all of humanity, would have gone without the phrase “Eureka, I have earned a burrito!” if it was not for my efforts in the field.
This first post was supposed to be my explanation of why I decided to start a blog, something that for years now I have been fundamentally opposed to. Somewhere along that thought train line, I may have have subtly derailed, yet I believe we may have arrived at the station anyway. Ooh, train metaphore! Now my post is not just informative and introductive, it's got a mother freaking train metaphor. Might as well give up all you other Pulitzer Prize wanting authors out there, I've got this year all wrapped up. Fuck, where did I put my keys.
In all seriousness I know that asking the six of you, strangers and friends, to aid me in this particular experiment of writing was one of the best ideas I've had in a long time. A lone blogger has always seemed, in some way, lacking to me. Self fulfilling ego-stroking wordsturbation (not that there is anything wrong with that). But this doesn't quite feel like that. This feels, I don't know. I'm a strange combination of pumped and terrified at the idea that friends and strangers are going to, in short order, be reading what I just wrote.
It is now 3:19 AM where I am. I have read and reread these “first-post” paragraphs, trying to parse it into something worthy of your time. Is it long enough? Is it too long? Should I take myself more seriously? Less? Do I actually have any control over that? *sigh* No, this is probably done. The first post is going up. Maybe just one last “blast-off” checklist with the ol' brain here:
brain: So, first post huh? Turn out good?
me: I... I have no idea. It turned out, that's all that matters I suppose.
brain: Well, that's ok. You haven't written casually like this in years. How about the site, you get the site design worked out?
me: um.. no. It's very red and brown and grey, and it turns out I don't know as much html as I thought. The more I look at it the more I don't like it.
brain: Oh... well the other contributors though, they are all onboard. Everyones pumped and ready to go! One of them might clean up the site, or you can now that you know people are looking at it!
me: yea maybe... I'm not sure I haven't actually even heard back from everyone about the start date yet.
brain: Well, they're all pretty busy. I mean, you picked these people because they were interesting and colorful. Interesting colorful people rarely find themselves bored with nothing to do.
me: I find myself with nothing to do all the time!
brain: *cough cough* oh man, look at the time. You better post this and get to bed.
me: Why is my brain coughing? But I guess you have a point. To be honest with you brain, this is basically exactly how I figured this thing would launch. I guess I wouldn't have it any other way.
brain: So you do feel good about it?
me: Yea brain, I do.
stomach: Hey shut up, would ya! Some of us are trying to get some sleep!
brain: Sorry...
me: oh, yea, sorry.
stomach: Whatever jerks, 729 MONKEY IS GO!
In fact, as I look back on my time spent upon this little ball of dirt spinning around a mid-sized fusion reaction ninety two million, nine hundred fifty five thousand, eight hundred seventeen miles away, I can honestly say I haven't really gotten too much done yet. At least, less than I would have thought. For instance, I really thought I'd have this fantastic post ready for the first day of my new “blog project thingy”. Yet here it is, 1:22 in the morning, and I'm still trying to finish my own introduction. Shit.
Please don't get me wrong. I do not see myself a lazy man, or unsuccessful, or even unlucky. My research is progressing, slowly but steadily, towards a good end. I believe the work I do serves a greater purpose than my own. When I jokingly say after a lunch with friends, “time to get back to work, humanity isn't going to save itself”, a part of me actually believes it. And, upon a recent presentation of some data to my advisor, I saw a look of excitement in his eyes normally reserved for a fresh cup of cappuccino. “This is publishable stuff!” he tells me. “This is the exactly the direction you should be going!” he says. I take his words with me when I walk out of his office. I hold onto it all day, and am so damn proud of myself. I walk back into my office and shout “Eureka, I have earned a burrito!”. The Chinese fellow in my office turns to me and asks why. “Because”, I tell him while assuming a pose like a superhero in a comic, “today, I helped save the world with science.” Soon, I am in my local burrito eatery, and I am savoring my reward. A delicious chicken burrito filled with grilled onions and the hopes and dreams of children of tomorrow. I close my eyes and see the parade of beautiful girls wearing lab coats and large rimmed glasses carrying me through the streets shouting “A genius! Our savior! A keeper of his fellow man!”.
It is at this point, when upon I open my eyes, and I suddenly realize I locked my keys in the car. The next half hour I spend trying to find the phone number for a locksmith who is open on Easter. The next 80 dollars I spend is on that particular locksmith. He is a small man with a beer belly and a white service truck. In about 15 seconds he uses a small hand inflated heavy duty rubber balloon to pry open my passenger side door a crack, and then uses a 4 foot long slightly curved metal rod to reach in and hit the “door unlock” button. His wife, with her white jacket and small rimmed glasses, watches from inside the van. She is proud of him. I watch as they drive the van off into the sunset, and I am left alone.
Reflect with me. What I do is good work, but in all honesty, if I wasn't doing it somebody else would be. I work very hard, but I do not come into this field carrying some savant level mathematics abilities. In fact, if we want to get down and compare grades, you'll find mine are probably somewhere below the average “scientist who gets a parade thrown for him/her” threshold. This doesn't bother me. This is simply the hand I was dealt, and I've played it pretty good thus far. However, I really do have this drive to do something good, something that can be called a “life accomplishment”, something that no one else has done. And you know what? I just checked on google, and nobody has ever published the sentence “Eureka, I have earned a burrito!” to the web. Yet just here, today, I have done it TWICE so far. Here in lies the power of blogging, friends. Herein lies the keys to creation of sentences, perhaps even articles, that had never before existed. Who knows how long the internet, and subsequently all of humanity, would have gone without the phrase “Eureka, I have earned a burrito!” if it was not for my efforts in the field.
This first post was supposed to be my explanation of why I decided to start a blog, something that for years now I have been fundamentally opposed to. Somewhere along that thought train line, I may have have subtly derailed, yet I believe we may have arrived at the station anyway. Ooh, train metaphore! Now my post is not just informative and introductive, it's got a mother freaking train metaphor. Might as well give up all you other Pulitzer Prize wanting authors out there, I've got this year all wrapped up. Fuck, where did I put my keys.
In all seriousness I know that asking the six of you, strangers and friends, to aid me in this particular experiment of writing was one of the best ideas I've had in a long time. A lone blogger has always seemed, in some way, lacking to me. Self fulfilling ego-stroking wordsturbation (not that there is anything wrong with that). But this doesn't quite feel like that. This feels, I don't know. I'm a strange combination of pumped and terrified at the idea that friends and strangers are going to, in short order, be reading what I just wrote.
It is now 3:19 AM where I am. I have read and reread these “first-post” paragraphs, trying to parse it into something worthy of your time. Is it long enough? Is it too long? Should I take myself more seriously? Less? Do I actually have any control over that? *sigh* No, this is probably done. The first post is going up. Maybe just one last “blast-off” checklist with the ol' brain here:
brain: So, first post huh? Turn out good?
me: I... I have no idea. It turned out, that's all that matters I suppose.
brain: Well, that's ok. You haven't written casually like this in years. How about the site, you get the site design worked out?
me: um.. no. It's very red and brown and grey, and it turns out I don't know as much html as I thought. The more I look at it the more I don't like it.
brain: Oh... well the other contributors though, they are all onboard. Everyones pumped and ready to go! One of them might clean up the site, or you can now that you know people are looking at it!
me: yea maybe... I'm not sure I haven't actually even heard back from everyone about the start date yet.
brain: Well, they're all pretty busy. I mean, you picked these people because they were interesting and colorful. Interesting colorful people rarely find themselves bored with nothing to do.
me: I find myself with nothing to do all the time!
brain: *cough cough* oh man, look at the time. You better post this and get to bed.
me: Why is my brain coughing? But I guess you have a point. To be honest with you brain, this is basically exactly how I figured this thing would launch. I guess I wouldn't have it any other way.
brain: So you do feel good about it?
me: Yea brain, I do.
stomach: Hey shut up, would ya! Some of us are trying to get some sleep!
brain: Sorry...
me: oh, yea, sorry.
stomach: Whatever jerks, 729 MONKEY IS GO!
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